Report 1479
Report #1479 Skillset: Aerochemantics Skill: Cloudkill/Quantum/Aurora/Vacuum Org: Aeromancers Status: Completed May 2016 Furies' Decision: Solution 1. Problem: Cloudkill, Quantum, Aurora and Vacuum, more commonly known as chembombs, are effects that aerochems (or any chemwood) can create that explode in the room after 10 seconds. The first three of each of these specs cost 5 power and either 2 or 3 passives to deal some damage and give either one or two secondary effects (such as affs, or ego/mana drain). The fourth costs 10 power and all 4 passives to deal damage and potentially stun, with both scaling based on how many afflictions each enemy has on a set list of 4 (woods) and 5 (chems) afflictions. The largest deterrent to using any of these bombs, whether it is in 1v1 or in a group battle is that they consume a significant portion of a chemwood's passive offence. To put these passives back up require either 4 seconds of equilibrium each (so 8-16 seconds), or around 3.2 seconds of equilibrium and 3 power to put them all up. These passives tick 11 seconds after they are put up and every 11 seconds after that. This creates a very unwieldy situation where using these bombs in any scenario means that the chemwood must spend a long period of time (and maybe power) in the middle of battle just to get their already pitiful offence back into a working state. 0 R: 0 Solution #1: Change Cloudkill/Quantum/Aurora/Vacuum (and all equivalent bombs in the other chemwood specs) to not consume the passives. Instead, have the relevant passives "reset" their ticks to occur 11 seconds after the bomb is first cast (so 1 second after the bomb explodes) and every 11 seconds after that. Player Comments: ---on 5/10 @ 01:19 writes: Omg supported. ---on 5/10 @ 02:01 writes: Supported. Does it even need to reset the ticks? This might actually be a way to land the 10p aff scaling if you time it well. ---on 5/10 @ 02:52 writes: The chemwood passives/bombs in general are all so lacklustre compared to their mancy/druidry counterparts (less affs, less hindering, less aoe, less passive damage, less damage upon bomb explosion) that this general buff is probably justified. However, it should be important to note that not all chemwoods are created equal, and some of those passives are more hindering, and stack with each other, better than others. It creates the scenario where the same amount of investment (10p) can result in lopsided and unbalanced hindering effects leading to incongruent difficulty of hitting the affliction boost thresholds across the different guilds (the reset will help prevent this from happening, though). This is also before considering synergy within the guild's org, too. It should also be noted that this also pushes the chemwoods more and more towards being aoe based classes (centered around their bombs more than they already are) which erodes the original intent of the archetype to be an alternative to the the mancy/druidry route. All that said, I support solution 1 in the absence of better alternatives. ---on 5/10 @ 04:29 writes: @Raeri: I actually think that it would become -too- easy to set up the 10 power bombs with enough affs to guarantee a kill, particularly for some specs as Lerad is suggesting. ---on 5/14 @ 22:44 writes: Lerad is correct but that's pretty far out of scope for 1 report and should be handled by each envoy. Fix the foundation first, which is that the mechanics around chemwoods suck, and the guilds with the crappy aff combinations can address those ---on 5/22 @ 17:14 writes: I support solution 1. I share Lerad's concerns but I also agree with Cyndarin that fixing the foundational issue is more important for the time being. ---on 5/26 @ 16:39 writes: It makes more sense to just suppress the next tick of the relevant passives instead of screwing around with changing the timers or desynching effects. One thing to note is that this will dramatically increase the rubble effect's practical impact on things, making it harder to run away from bombs once they've started as well as lowering their opportunity cost. I don't think this will really mean anything meaningful in practice.